Great Teeth & Gums: Part I

I have been teaching four things to keep your teeth & gums healthy for a lifetime, for 30 years. Here is the first of four blogs on the most important things you can do right now to achieve optimal health and vitality with a beautiful smile.

Part 1: Effective Tooth Brushing

Effective tooth brushing is brushing your teeth & gums thoroughly, immediately after eating or drinking any carbohydrate, with an effective toothpaste that kills the bacteria that cause cavities and gum disease.

There are over 700 different kinds of bugs in your mouth. Four of these cause cavities and thirty cause almost all gum disease. You need toothpaste and mouth rinse products that kill the bad bugs and leave the good bugs alone (e.g. Tooth & Gum, Closys and Dentarome Plus products). If you are wondering if your oral hygiene products are working or not, we can check during a visit at the office. We have a microscope that can show the bugs, in a easy plaque sample, from your mouth and immediately show you the results.

When you eat carbohydrates, the four cavity-causing bugs use this food and convert it to acids that eat away at your teeth. This acid attack goes on for 20 minutes after the food has been eaten. You have to stop the acid attack immediately and give the teeth a chance to repair and rebuild between meals.

Stay tuned for the second most important thing to do to save your teeth and to learn why flossing is not as effective as you may think.